{"id":6638,"date":"2026-10-12T14:44:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T12:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6638"},"modified":"2026-10-12T16:54:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T14:54:04","slug":"state-right-exist-apartheid-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2026-10-12\/state-right-exist-apartheid-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"No state has a \u2018right\u2019 to exist \u2013 least of all an apartheid, genocidal state like Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"subtitle subtitle-HEEcLo\" dir=\"auto\"><em><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6639\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1669889421859.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"990\" height=\"644\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1669889421859.jpg 990w, https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1669889421859-300x195.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1669889421859-768x500.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 990px) 100vw, 990px\" \/>After the Greens passed a motion declaring \u2018Zionism is racism\u2019, every establishment journalist is suddenly playing dumb about the most elementary of issues in international law<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Israel has no right to exist. That\u2019s the position in international law. It has nothing to do with hatred of Israel or antisemitism.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, no state \u2013 none \u2013 has a \u201cright\u201d to exist, including states busy extolling their democratic credentials.<\/p>\n<p>If the UK had a \u201cright\u201d to exist, for example, it would mean that Scotland could not be allowed to vote for independence. Why? Because such a vote would break up the UK. It would be a violation of the UK\u2019s supposed \u201cright\u201d to exist as the UK.<\/p>\n<p>Which is precisely why the UK has no \u201cright\u201d to exist.<\/p>\n<p>Peoples have a right to exist. When that right is abused, it invariably involves very serious violations of international law \u2013 often through crimes such as apartheid, ethnic cleansing or genocide.<\/p>\n<p>States, by contrast, don\u2019t have a \u201cright\u201d to exist. They simply do exist as a matter of fact \u2013 until they suddenly don\u2019t. Like apartheid South Africa. Like Rhodesia. Like Czechoslovakia. Like Yugoslavia. Like Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n<p>This is so obvious it should not even need stating.<\/p>\n<p>Were states to have a \u201cright\u201d to exist, completely arbitrary factors such as their borders, demographic make-up and political institutions would be sacrosanct. Inviolable. It would be impossible for minorities to secede, for territories to be transferred, for apartheid structures to be overturned . Any such change would be a transgression of the state\u2019s \u201cright to exist\u201d as it is.<\/p>\n<p>And yet every single journalist employed by an establishment media outlet is suddenly playing dumb on this most elementary of issues. They\u2019ve all suddenly had a collective lobotomy. They insist Israel must be the exception to the rule that no state has a \u201cright<em>\u201d<\/em> to exist.<\/p>\n<p>Watch, for example, the BBC\u2019s Nick Robinson berating Green party leader Zack Polanski for refusing to affirm Israel\u2019s \u201cright to exist\u201d. Polanksi correctly argues instead that Israelis and Palestinians have a right to live in equality.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Why is this a difficult question to answer ?<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Nick Robinson (@bbcnickrobinson) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/bbcnickrobinson\/status\/2108514857494434056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 9, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"header-anchor-post\">Incendiary stupidity<\/h3>\n<p>Why all this incendiary stupidity from our supposedly brightest and best journalists?<\/p>\n<p>Their doltishness is not accidental.<\/p>\n<p>A Green party motion last week determined that Zionism \u2013 the ideology that created and sustains Israel \u2013 is racism. That brought very unwelcome attention to the question of what kind of state Israel is.<\/p>\n<p>I have written at length on why Zionism is a form of racism, so I won\u2019t rehash the arguments. You can read them <a href=\"https:\/\/jonathancook.substack.com\/p\/whats-shameful-is-that-no-party-before\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">What\u2019s shameful is that no party before the Greens called Zionism racist.<\/p>\n<p>Read my latest here: https:\/\/t.co\/CcAkv0wj3Q<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Jonathan_K_Cook\/status\/2108551448145580128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 9, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>But what Robinson and the rest of the media are insisting on is a unique carve-out for Israel. They argue that Israel has an exceptional right \u2013 one that no other state enjoys \u2013 to exist as it is and in perpetuity.<\/p>\n<p>The implication, the one they want you to infer without them having to spell it out, is that any attempt to end Israel as a racist state, and reform it into a democracy where Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights, is a violation of its supposed \u201cright to exist\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>They also want you to assume that anyone who denies Israel\u2019s \u201cright to exist\u201d is calling for the mass murder, the genocide, of Israeli Jews \u2013 and possibly all Jews.<\/p>\n<p>In their telling, those calling for the extermination of Jews include Zack Polanksi, the Jewish leader of the Greens, and Stephen Kapos, an elderly Holocaust survivor and one of the proposers of the motion.<\/p>\n<p>What these journalists are doing has nothing to do with protecting the Jewish population that live in Israel. It\u2019s about setting in stone a highly militarised state that subjugates Palestinians, both in the occupied territories and inside Israel itself, that refuses to define its borders, that has been judged to be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.middleeasteye.net\/opinion\/icj-clears-fog-hiding-western-support-israel-rogue-state\">committing the crime of apartheid<\/a> by the world\u2019s highest court, and that is carrying out a genocide in Gaza according to a consensus of legal and human rights authorities and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/sep\/01\/israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza-worlds-top-scholars-on-the-say\">genocide scholars<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If apartheid South Africa had no \u201cright\u201d to exist, Israel has no \u201cright\u201d to exist either. Its crimes are far graver than apartheid South Africa\u2019s, as the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate, famously <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4UTHTszgg1Q\">observed<\/a> after he travelled around the occupied territories \u2013 and did so long <em>before<\/em> Israel started committing genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>Like that other famous apartheid state, Israel must be reconstituted as a democracy so that it no longer poses a danger to the Palestinian people it has spent decades dispossessing, oppressing and now genociding.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"header-anchor-post\">\u2018State of Gaza\u2019<\/h3>\n<p>Every time I make this argument on social media, Israel\u2019s apologists excitedly exclaim that I have been hoisted by my own petard. If Israel has no right to exist, they jabber, then a Palestinian state must have no right to exist either.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, that\u2019s right. Let me say it again: no state has a \u201cright\u201d to exist.<\/p>\n<p>And that may prove a very good thing for the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine Donald Trump\u2019s Board of Peace decides to rebuild the tiny enclave of Gaza along the lines of his stated plan: as a Mar-a-Lago resort on the Med, where Palestinians live effectively as guest workers, servicing wealthy Gulf Arabs with restaurants, AI data centres, casinos and brothels. Trump might choose to call this madhouse the state of Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>And imagine that, under intense international pressure, Israel finally allows the remaining territorial shards of the West Bank it hasn\u2019t colonised with illegal settlements to hold elections tightly regulated by Israeli military officials. The fragmented West Bank government has no control over its borders or airspace, it has no territorial integrity, it has no army, it is separated from Gaza and East Jerusalem, and it has no access to the outside world without Israel\u2019s permission. Israel decides to call this hell-hole the state of Palestine.<\/p>\n<div class=\"subscribe-widget is-signed-up is-fully-subscribed\" data-component-name=\"SubscribeWidget\">\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-reset button-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-justifyContent-center pc-reset\">\n<p>Does this \u201cstate of Gaza\u201d have a \u201cright\u201d to exist? Does \u201cthe state of Palestine\u201d have a \u201cright\u201d to exist too?<\/p>\n<p>Would any struggle by Palestinians living there to assert real control over either of these states and reform them violate those states\u2019 \u201cright to exist\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>For the sake of the Palestinian people, let\u2019s hope not.<\/p>\n<p>But that is precisely the argument being advanced by Israel\u2019s apologists. If the current state of Israel has a sacrosanct \u201cright to exist\u201d as it is, then any supposed state Trump imposes on the Palestinian people, on whatever terms, would enjoy a similar \u201cright to exist\u201d.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"header-anchor-post\">Dignity and security<\/h3>\n<p>The mistake being made here is to associate the state as it exists with the people it is supposed to represent.<\/p>\n<p>Israelis have a right to exist \u2013 they have a right not to be oppressed, ethnically cleansed, genocided \u2013 and the state that represents them is legitimate so long as its role is to protect them from these kinds of threats. So long as it provides them with a degree of dignity and security.<\/p>\n<p>But Israelis lose the right to maintain their state as it is if that state is used to oppress, ethnically cleanse or genocide another people, like the Palestinians. Then it becomes an illegitimate state, just like apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany. It must be reconstituted in ways that regain its legitimacy.<\/p>\n<p>That is not \u201csingling out\u201d Israel.<\/p>\n<p>The Palestinians have never had a modern state. They have lived under various occupiers \u2013 including the Ottomans, the British and Israel. They were entirely excluded from the decolonisation process that followed the end of the Second World War.<\/p>\n<p>They cannot be judged as having a legitimate or illegitimate state because they have no state. They need a state precisely to protect them from being oppressed, ethnically cleansed and genocided by the state representing Israelis.<\/p>\n<p>The armed groups in Gaza are not a state, and neither are the so-called \u201cmoderates\u201d in the West Bank. They are not even proper governments. They are either quislings or resistance movements fighting for their people\u2019s liberation, a right accorded to the Palestinian people under international law. The Palestinians are fighting to have a state that represents them, to remove an occupier that abuses and murders them.<\/p>\n<p>That representation might come via a Palestinian state, or it might come via a confederated or unitary state in which Israelis and Palestinians enjoy equal rights.<\/p>\n<p>Even that state won\u2019t have a right to exist. It will have to earn its place in the hearts of Israelis and Palestinians by serving to protect their collective dignity and security better than any other arrangement.<\/p>\n<p>That is a lesson we could all do with remembering as we ponder whether the states that claim to represent us really do so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the Greens passed a motion declaring \u2018Zionism is racism\u2019, every establishment journalist is suddenly playing dumb about the most elementary of issues in international law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,30],"class_list":{"0":"post-6638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-israel-apartheid","9":"tag-zionism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6638"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6642,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6638\/revisions\/6642"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}